Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/120896 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
CIW Discussion Paper No. 5/2015
Publisher: 
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Centrum für Interdisziplinäre Wirtschaftsforschung (CIW), Münster
Abstract: 
Threats of mass revolts could effectively constrain a dictator's public policy if it were not for the collective-action problem. Mass revolts nevertheless happen, but they follow a stochastic pattern. We describe this pattern in a threshold model of collective action and integrate it into an agency model which demonstrates how mass revolts can impact on a winning coalition's incentives to keep backing an incumbent dictator. Having observed public policy and found a sufficiently high posterior probability of the dictator to be of a "bad" character, the winning coalition's members may exploit an incidentally happening mass revolt for escaping a loyalty trap that had otherwise prevented them from switching to disloyalty. While this explains why mass revolts sometimes happen to oust a dictator, the arising policy constraints in dictatorships may nevertheless be weak in practice.
Subjects: 
Autocracy
Revolutions
Threshold Models
Selectorate Theory
JEL: 
D02
H11
D74
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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